Shipping

[montmill]

Some time ago Ruth Nihls referred to this blogger so I signed up for his daily blog on marketing and business. Seth Godin is his name. Here's his more recent post:

Seth's Blog : "We don't care" (you won't let us)

The customer service from the freight shipping company that came to my home a few months ago was truly terrible. Not simply a lack of care, but an aggressive embrace of uncaring. Every interaction was off-putting and inefficient.

This is the result of sort by price.

It turns out that a lot of freight shipping is done through an intermediary. Software automatically scans all available options and picks the cheapest one.

Which means that brands don't matter, customer feedback doesn't matter and reviews don't matter. Neither does corporate responsibility or employee satisfaction.

All that matters is the price the shipper pays and ultimately the price of the stock.

Sort by price insulates the producer from the customer. When we resort to a single metric, we get what we measure, and the side effects pile up.

More and more, the choices are, "You'll get a discount and you will get less than you paid for" and /or "you'll pay a bit more and you'll get more than you paid for."

 

[monophoto]

Delivery logistics is complicated. Probably the most difficult aspect of the problem is the 'last mile' dilemma - sometimes the recipient is in a suburban office park next to a major international airport that a truck from every delivery service on the planet passes three times a day. And sometimes the recipient is in the back of beyond, 15 miles from the nearest gas station and outside the range of the major cell phone companies. So it makes sense for a shipper to use a 'sort by price' algorithm to choose the best means of shipping on a case-by-case basis.

BUT - to David's point, it also makes sense for the shipper to set standards that it expects its delivery contractors to meet, and to have the discipline to take contractors out of the selection matrix if they don't meet those standards.

Mistakes happen, and problems arise - we all know that s**t happens. And we can deal with those problems if they are addressed and rectified promptly.

But ultimately the customer decides - not necessary who the shipping contractor will be, but rather which vendor gets the business. And if a vendor gets a reputation for consistently caring more about the cost of shipping than about whether their customers get their stuff promptly and in good condition, then another vendor should be chosen.

 

[penicillin]

For certain regularly scheduled deliveries that I receive, I have been successful at getting the sender companies to switch away from certain unreliable delivery companies. Sometimes it is easier to tell the shipper to "use [name of reliable shipper]" rather than "avoid [name of unreliable shipper". Whatever works.

In case anyone cares, for us the R.R.DONNELLY company has failed every delivery to our home that we know about. The local Yelp shows every office in our area with "1 star" reviews. We tell shippers who use RR Donnelly to avoid them for our shipments. I ask them to choose USPS, UPS, or Fedex.

 

[Joebobber]

For certain regularly scheduled deliveries that I receive, I have been successful at getting the sender companies to switch away from certain unreliable delivery companies. Sometimes it is easier to tell the shipper to "use [name of reliable shipper]" rather than "avoid [name of unreliable shipper". Whatever works.

In case anyone cares, for us the R.R.DONNELLY company has failed every delivery to our home that we know about. The local Yelp shows every office in our area with "1 star" reviews. We tell shippers who use RR Donnelly to avoid them for our shipments. I ask them to choose USPS, UPS, or Fedex.

Here we have issues regularly with almost every one. Even Amazon. We are 45 miles from the nearest town that has more than 100 people. Even the post office is unreliable. Eventually things usually make it, but I have learned to try to have so much of everything that when I order something I have a good month before I need it.

 

[MRDucks2]

Interestingly, on the private side I have found UPS Lift Gate service to be above their regular service, even though their regular service is much better than FedEx where I live now.

Professionally, unless you have your own truck line nearly everything goes through an aggregator, even if it has a big name in front. For years we used a small aggregator who understood our business and responded to our feedback. Then the big minds decided to do a contract with Penske. Those were a miserable few years. For critical delivery we would break protocol and go back to the previous guy. Finally got rid of the Penske contract and went back to the original guy, working for a different smaller aggregator (or different name).

Problem now is just getting trucks. In fact we have a company we hate to do business with that use on occasion because he can always get us a truck, but we know these folks are bottom tier and plan for it.

 

[TellicoTurning]

Without knowing what the OP's specific complaint is, I'll throw my 2 cents worth in here... I spent 40 years doing logistics, shipping, consolidating, receiving, export packing, export shipping, etc... now a days with the cfovid clogging up a lot of the shipping lanes and shortage of trucking, shipping has become much more complex.... when I first started in the business, I could call a trucker or a truck broker, order a truck for a specific time for pick up and/or delivery... then as time progressed, the individual point A to point B type of shipping melded in a hub type of transport.... starting with Fedex, carriers set up a central distribution point (Memphis, TN) where all shipments were congregated, re-sorted, then reshipped to destination.... worked well enough for Fedex.... then other carriers joined in... next cam Emery Airfreight (they are no longer around - but used Dayton, Ohio... at some point along the way, USPS set up distribution hubs across the country... something shipped from my house in Tellico Plains to Madisonville, TN (13 miles away) will likely go to Chattanooga then back to Madisonville... an 80 mile each way round trip.... Internationally gets equally hairy... some of larger forwarding company (consolidators) have a central point to which they also ship, depending on the final destination.... sometimes this is an expedited method, some time not. I've had shipments land in Australia in 2 days from Houston, then take 2 weeks to transit inland Australia... and vice versa.

In cases where the vendor covers the shipping, he will use the most expeditious and least expensive method... shipping can be a large part of his expenses of doing business. If the buyer is paying the freight, then he/she has an option to determine who/how the shipment goes. A lot of vendors are now offering "free" shipping to entice more buyers.

In a small town like Tellico Plains (population about 800) we don't have much in the way of options... Fedex & UPS both operate out of Athens, some 40 miles away... we do have USPS that's relatively efficient. If you live in a small community, rural and no large metro area close, then the drivers for the carriers have to log in miles to you address from their base point... and with the courier companies (Fedex & UPS) the drivers are under a lot of pressure to maintain a fairly specific time schedule.... Even in Houston our Fedex driver was only allowed about 2 minutes at our stop to pick up & deliver all the packages, and on occasions where signature were needed we as receivers checked condition of each box before we signed... he never made it in or out in 2 minutes. (We often received half a truck load of individual package)...

Other drivers can just be surly because they can be.... not good for a company image.

Logistics can be frustrating and intimidating at the same time. I had one client that we packed for and shipped internationally that some times required me to order 10 or more trucks to pick up at a vendor to my warehouse.... then once packed I would need 10 or more trucks to deliver to the port.... that could be just one or part of one shipment.

I no longer do much ordering on line for my turnings... but have learned to plan in advance and order far enough in advance that I didn't have to worry about on time delivery.

 

[MRDucks2]

Oh, I forgot that now, brokered drivers may simply not show up at all! That used to be a rare occurrence and happens with some regularity these days.